4 Reales Type IV Countermark

El Salvador had no mint of its own in the early 1860s and relied heavily on countermarking foreign silver to legitimize it for domestic circulation. This Type IV application — punched onto host coins already in use — reflects the government's repeated attempts to assert control over a currency supply it could not independently produce. The host coins are typically Guatemalan or South American republican reales of varying fineness, which made the .903 standard a statement of intent as much as a technical specification.